Lakewood

Robusto & Briar offers quality cigars in an eco-friendly shop
Patrick Siegel has lived all over the country, the last 10 years in Minneapolis honing is trade as a tobacconist – hand-blending pipe tobacco.

Although he is originally from Chicago, when Siegel saw Lakewood on a recent visit to his fiance’s home town of Rocky River, he knew Lakewood was the place to open his own shop.

“It just seemed to click,” he recalls. “I love Lakewood, it’s just fun. I love the fact that it’s a walking community.”

So in May, Siegel opened Robusto & Briar, what he describes as the “perfect cigar shop and lounge,” The shop sells premium cigars, house blends of pipe tobacco and accessories in a refurbished 3,000 square-foot storefront at 1388 Riverside Drive.
 
Before Siegel could open for business, however, he had to rehab the former software company space all the way down to the floor. “We had to cut the whole place down to the studs and re-do it,” he says. “It was a hazard to the public.”
 
Siegel rebuilt the space using locally-sourced reclaimed and recycled wood, including the floors, barn doors made of alder and an 1880 back bar made of wormy chestnut that he scored from one of the oldest cigar distributors in Ohio.
 
Rather than use smoke eaters, which cause air pollution while clearing the room of tobacco smoke, Siegel opted for an environmentally-friendly air-to-air heat exchanger to clear the smoke inside.
 
The walls are adorned with pipe and cigar art “We have the obligatory picture of Winston Churchill, French impressionists and plenty of guys smoking cigars,” Siegel says. Two lounges feature high definition televisions and customers can relax in plenty of leather chairs and couches while enjoying their purchases. Siegel is in the midst of building some private meeting spaces in the lounge.  
 
The biggest feature is a 360 square-foot walk in humidor made of Spanish cedar – one of the largest humidors in the state.  “It’s the elephant in the room,” Siegel jokes. “We built the whole thing around it.”
 
Siegel has found backing for his shop from some unlikely people. “Even the non-cigar smokers have been supportive,” he says. “They say, ‘oh, I’m going to go find my friend who does smoke cigars.’ The decision to be here in this town was good.”
 
Right now Siegel has one employee and his fiancé, Nicole, helps out at Robusto & Briar.
 
 
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Five local filmmakers unveil documentaries on refugees in Cleveland
Ohio is one of the top 10 states in the country that takes refugees – people who have fled their native countries for fear of persecution for race, religion, nationality, being part of a social group or political beliefs – and Cleveland is second in the state for helping these people call the area home.

From 2000-2012, 4,518 refugees resettled in Cleveland, according to a report prepared in 2012 for the Refugee Services Collaborative (RSC).  And the number is growing. So, to celebrate and educate the Cleveland community on the city’s refugee population, five local filmmakers produced short documentary films about refugee life before and after Cleveland.
 
Those films were shown for the first time on Saturday, June 20 at the Beck Center for the Arts in Lakewood. About 120 community leaders, advocates, refugees, business owners and volunteers gathered to watch the films, as some of the filmmakers introduced them.
 
“It’s going represent a broad swatch of who the refugees are, the different ethnicities and nationalities they represent, and what’s changed after they got to Cleveland,” explains Tom Mrosko, director of Cleveland Catholic Charities Migration and Refugee Services. “The RSC tried to invite people who aren’t as familiar with the Collaborative or people coming to the community.”
 
The films are meant to educate people on the 70,000 refugees who resettle in the United States each year. “They come to almost every state in the country and they want to fit in and they want to better themselves,” says Mrosko. “It really comes down to lack of understanding of who refugees are. The goal is to involve people who may not understand the process – show them in a way that they can embrace it. We thought doing short films really gets the message across.”
 
The filmmakers are: Kevin Kerwin with “The Interpreter;” Chelsie Corso with “Just Keep Going;” Chris Langer with “Rangers United;” Paul Sobota with “Alida;” and Robert Banks with “Ashmita.”
 
Now the films will be shown at various community centers, film festivals, churches, universities and other public venues. Locations and time will be announced on the RSC website. Four of the five films can be viewed on YouTube.
 
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RapChat allows users to share their raps with friends
While on spring break in 2013 from his junior year at Ohio University, Seth Miller and three of his friends were killing time in the car on their way to Florida. “My buddy and I were freestyling on the way down to spring break,” he recalls. “It was pretty terrible, but they were hilarious. I knew people would enjoy doing it.”
 
Miller, now 22, then spent the next two years developing his app concept – pick from a curated rap beat, freestyle over it and send it to friends in a one-minute message. The Lakewood resident presented RapChat at Startup Weekend Athens and won $1,000. Miller officially launched RapChat for iPhones in June 2014.
 
The app targets 16-24 year olds and spans gender and racial lines. RapChat is available for iPhone free download in the iTunes App Store.
 
“In December we ramped up and started going like crazy, like a rocket ship,” says Miller. Today, RapChat has already seen 410,000 downloads and 4 million raps sent in 2015. There’s no shortage of beats to choose from either. “We haven’t had to do much recently,” Miller brags. “Producers submit beats and we pick out the best ones. We curate new beats once a week.”
 
The app features beats from more than 20 artists such as Cal Scruby and Matt Houston. The company has plans to add bigger producers as time goes soon and has plans to release a beat by ASAP Ty Beats, a member of the ASAP Mob and producer of ASAP Rocky’s hits “Purple Swag” and “Peso.”
 
When the app hit 300,000 downloads last year, Miller decided to quit his job and focus on RapChat full time. The company now has 10 team members – all located throughout the Midwest. One of the other three original founders, Brandon Logan, is still with RapChat.

Right now, the company is not focusing on revenue. Miller takes freelance jobs to pay the bills. But he says they already have some "major brands" interested in partnering with RapChat when the time is right.